Top U.S. Officer: WikiLeaks Might Have ‘Blood on Its Hands’

As Pentagon leaders go, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen are fairly mild-mannered — prone to quiet, careful assessments, not table-pounding bluster. But they could barely contain their anger on Thursday at WikiLeaks for publishing tens of thousands of secret documents about the Afghanistan war. Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went so far as to say that the transparency activists “might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier” or an Afghan partner during a Pentagon press briefing, his voice elevating slightly.

Neither Mullen nor Gates considered the documents WikiLeaks obtained to have strategic value or even particular utility to understanding the war. But that didn’t diminish their anger at WikiLeaks’s huge disclosure on Sunday, which they described as having consequences on the battlefield and beyond. The consequences of the leak are “potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and our Afghan partners,” said Gates, a former CIA director with a famous penchant for secrecy. “Tactics, techniques and procedures will become known to our adversaries.” An internal department investigation into who leaked is already underway, aided by the FBI.

Ever since the first Gulf War, there’s been an effort to broaden and flatten access to information within the military in order to foster an ethic of small-unit initiative. Beyond the inquiry’s narrow question of who leaked, Gates said that the “massive breach” will force department leaders to reconsider whether that information needs to be stovepiped again.

“We want those soldiers at a forward operating base to have all the information necessary, not just for their own security, but to accomplish their mission,” Gates said. “Should we change the way we approach that or do we continue to take the risk” of more exposures? (So long, SIPRNET access?) Gates added that he couldn’t confirm whether there have been new leaks waiting to come to light since WikiLeaks obtained its tranche of documents, some thousands of which it has yet to release.

Then there’s the consequence to America’s partners, particularly Afghans who put their lives at risk working with U.S. troops and whose identities are now exposed in the WikiLeaks documents. Gates said there was a “moral obligation” for the United States to “take some responsibility for their security,” but didn’t elaborate what measures the military might take. “Will people whose lives are on the line trust us to keep their identities secret?” Gates asked. “Will other governments trust us to keep their documents secret?”

Reporters challenged Mullen’s comment about WikiLeaks having blood on its hands, but the usually soft-spoken chairman didn’t back away. While he said he didn’t know that anyone has died because of the leaks, Mullen said that people who don’t handle battlefield reports of the sort that WikiLeaks published “can’t appreciate, in my opinion, how this information is networked together…. The potential threat is there to risk the lives of soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines,” as well as U.S. foreign allies in Afghanistan, “as well as Afghan citizens. And there’s no doubt in my mind about that.”